News

Dylan Schultz recently published an article which assembled and compared the genomes of different strains of the endosymbiotic bacteria Cardinium.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this year’s Interdepartmental Microbiology Fall Welcome Picnic! It was great to reconnect, meet new members of the community, and enjoy an evening of good food and our bocce ball competition!

We are proud to recognize Umar Shahid, a PhD candidate in Interdepartmental Microbiology program, for receiving the Veterinary Medicine Biomedical Research Graduate Scholarship.

The Interdepartmental Microbiology Program is excited to welcome this year’s incoming cohort of graduate students! Coming from diverse backgrounds, they share a common passion for exploring the microbial world.

Recently published in FEMS Microbiology Reviews, this review sheds light on Candidatus Cardinium hertigii (Cardinium), an obligate intracellular endosymbiont found in a diverse array of invertebrates. 

Dr. Hannah Watkins successfully defended her thesis on 7/14/25 titled, "Resistant potato starch metabolism in swine: Gut microbial trophic cascades from primary degraders to butyrate producers."

Congratulations, Dr. Watkins!! 

Dr. Jared Meinen-Jochum successfully defended his thesis on 6/13/25 titled, "Usage of segmented filamentous bacteria as a prophylactic to improve gut immune maturation in chickens."

Congratulations, Dr. Meinen-Jochum!! 

Dr. Sarah DeWolf successfully defended her thesis on 3/28/25 titled, "Investigating the role of genetic variation in the emergence of new phenotypes in an Escherichia coli pathobiont."

Congratulations, Dr. DeWolf! :)

Zackry Stevenson (MICRO PhD ’24) recently published a paper describing a field study that took place right on the ISU campus.

My collaborators and I are thrilled to announce that our manuscript titled: "Effect of rabbit gastrointestinal stasis (RGIS) on the fecal microbiota of pet rabbits" has been published in PLOS One!

(We are) Happy to announce that our paper characterizing the core vaginal microbiota of livestock was recently published in Frontiers in Microbiology.

Binayak Raj Pandey, a second-year PhD in Microbiology student from Dr. Xiang’s lab, was officially nominated and elected as a Full Member of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society.

Dr. Zackry Stevenson successfully defended his thesis on 11/15/24 titled, "Iron cycling and metal utilization by phototrophic and diazotrophic bacteria in iron-rich aquatic systems."

Michelle Chamberlain was recently awarded a fellowship through the NASA Iowa Space Grant Consortium for her work in the ancient ocean analog Deming Lake.

Congratulations Michelle!

MGSO hosted sessions for the Fall 2024 Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) conference at Iowa State.

Jared Meinen-Jochum and Caleb Skow of the laboratory of Dr. Melha Mellata recently published an article in mSphere titled, “Layer segmented filamentous bacteria colonize and impact gut health of broiler chickens”.

Link to article: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acssynbio.4c00312  

Celeste Snyder, a graduate student in the IM program working at the USDA-ARS, was a co-author of a recent Nature publication titled: "Dairy cows inoculated with highly pathogenic avian influenza virus H5N1" 

The 84^th annual meeting of the North Central branch of the American Society for Microbiology was hosted on October 4th at Minnesota State University in Mankato, MN.